The research found that cybercrime and other attacks cost UK businesses a total of £34 billion per year, consisting of £18 billion in lost revenue and £16 billion on increased IT spending as a result of breaches.

Some 60% of Chief Technology Officies (CTOs) feel the government is not doing enough to prevent cyberattacks. In addition, the top three concerns of UK business executives are breach costs (including forensic, cleanup and legal costs), reputation and brand damage, and lost revenue due to downtime.

The issue is widespread, according to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which found 81% of UK business suffered from a breach in 2014.

“The UK economy is under siege from cyberattackers and the UK government should look to other successful private/public partnerships – such as Swiss banking regulations, German data privacy laws and US breach disclosure laws – as a model of how to improve the situation for us all,” said Adrian Beck, Veracode’s director of enterprise security program management.

“For example, disclosure laws would require firms to report breaches in a timely fashion, thereby protecting consumers from identity theft and encouraging companies to implement best practices when dealing with cybersecurity,” he added.